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On Kate Jennings: Writers on Writers

Kate says she doesn’t know what to say about writing. When people ask, she tells them to prepare for a life of failure.

Award-winning writer Erik Jensen plunges the reader into the world of acclaimed novelist, poet and pioneering feminist Kate Jennings. Weaving in his interviews with Jennings in New York, he shows how poetry, politics and family were transmuted into her first novel, Snake – a work of art that depicts rural Australia in a funny, cutting and unforgettable way. This is a biography of a book and the life that made it.

In the Writers on Writers series, leading authors reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative and crisp, these books start a fresh conversation between past and present, shed new light on the craft of writing, and introduce some intriguing and talented authors and their work.

Published by Black Inc. in association with the University of Melbourne and State Library Victoria.

About the author

Erik Jensen is the founding editor of the Saturday Paper. He has written for film, television and the stage. His first book, Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen, won the Nib Award for Literature and was shortlisted …

Praise for On Kate Jennings

‘Despite the often serious subject matter covered … the compelling structure of this essay ensures that it is not a harrowing read, but rather an experience of gradual unfolding, of peeling back the many layers of a masterful writer to reveal what made her and her first novel.’ —Laura James, ArtsHub